Down the Shrinking Hole

by Jamie Ott

  If anyone had been hurt, Starr thought, she would enjoy hacking them all to pieces. It would be the perfect excuse to ‘let the beast out of the cage,’ so to speak… sickly, inwardly, she hoped…

  Carefully, quietly, Starr pulled with force, the door they had boarded up and reinforced from the inside. Unfortunately, for Starr, pulling the door was the equivalent of pulling the tab off of a soda, for it snapped off the wall, making loud crunching noises with wood splinters that flew everywhere.

  “Shit,” she cursed under her breath.

  She heard the one, who’d fired his gun, run toward the back door.

  When he got close enough to the broken door, she yanked him out, into the night air, by the neck of his shirt.

  Easily, she twisted the gun from his hands.

  He, then, threw a punch, but Starr’s reflexes were too quick. She instantly regretted using the move she’d learned in martial arts because instead of tripping him, she sent his skull through the pavement.

  Looking down at his splattered skull, she realized he was dead. For the first time in months, she felt a real, complex emotion: surprise. She didn’t mean to kill him, let alone shatter his skull into bits.

  Instantly, she broke into a sweat that was like the time she passed the chocolate shop.

  For the first time, in months, she felt her heart beat as she saw the flesh of his brain peak out from between his cracked skull; it reminded her of a partially de shelled walnut, revealing the meat within.

  Starr heard Shane calling to her but couldn’t tear her gaze from the fresh blood that was so fresh, so fragrant, so good.

  They are coming.

  But Shane was busy lapping up the blood, and she couldn’t stop. She took a large bite of the brain, and gulped it down, just like a zombie in a movie would.

  It was her animal, inside, that took over. She heard the footsteps, but, like a dog, it was impossible to pull herself away from her meal.

  Her senses didn’t come back to her until a man screamed bloody Mary at the top of his lungs.

  Starr looked up and saw Stephen standing there with a look of horror in his eyes.

  He tried to run, but Starr was already at his throat and ripping it out. Like cracking eggs, she broke open his skull into the concrete wall and sampled his brains as they spilled into her hands, between her fingers, and slid to the ground.

  There are three more.

  STOP IT, NOOOW!

  Shane screamed in Starr’s head.

  Starr dropped Stephen and put her hands up to her head; the scream was painful, like someone had taken a bat to her brain.

  Tearing herself away from her meal, she walked along the wall, like a cat on a fence. There was someone in the hallway with a gun. With the reflexes of a lion, she ran up, behind him, grabbed the weapon out of his hand.

  As he turned around, Starr realized what she must look like, by the look in his bulging, trembling eyes.

  It took a moment, but when the shock wore off, he screamed to his buddies.

  Two more men with guns ran toward them, she could hear their footsteps. Starr grabbed the one who screamed and dragged him through the back of the clinic and outside where she felt the need to fight him.

  It had been months since Starr had exercised her inner animal, and it felt good to be out there, under the moonlight and ready to rip apart a man.

  He tried to wrestle free from Starr’s grip as she dragged him.

  His eyes majorly bugged out at the sight of his fallen comrades’ that were busted up on the ground.

  The other two guys ran out and started screaming, too. Starr knew she needed to kill them quick, or risk the cops being called.

  Suddenly, one of the men shot her in the shoulder, but, this time, it didn’t faze her because she was in full animal function. Grabbing the gun and punching him in the face was nothing to her.

  Together, the other man, and the one Starr dragged outside, ran at her but they were no match. Starr ducked a punch from one of them right as she pushed down the foot of the other who tried to kick her in the gut. Then, like killing seven flies with one swat, she pulled her arm back and re extended a punch into both their faces, in a one-two type motion, knocking them out cold.

  “Keep them back,” Starr said to Shane through the air.

  Instinctively, she ransacked the back of the clinic, looking for a laundry bag. Once she found it, she ran outside and, like ripping wings off of a butterfly, she ripped the two dead bodies into pieces and stuffed them inside. Next, she dug up the earth and moved it around so as to hide the blood that colored the ground.

  She hoisted the three men, who were still alive, onto her left shoulder, and, under her arm, the two bags with the dead ripped up bodies. Starr leapt over the fence and hit the ground, running, fast through the streets; back to the drug lord’s house, up the steps, up the stairs and kicked in the door.

  Starr dropped the bags and slammed all three bodies onto the living room table, breaking it into pieces.

  She didn’t mean to break the table, just like she didn’t mean to kill the first man; she simply slipped up. It was always at moments of high anxiety that she slipped, just like earlier at Billie’s. One day, she berated herself, she was going to get into serious trouble.

  She walked up and down the room, trying to think if there was anything she should do before she left: any evidence that would lead the cops back to the clinic.

  Next, she wondered if she should kill the last three men.

 

  “Kill them,” someone said from behind.

  Star whipped around and sighed with relief, “Shane, you scared me.”

  “Yeah, I followed you. Listen, I just want to apologize for laying the fight on you. I just didn’t want the kids to see that we aren’t, exactly, normal.”

  “It’s all right,” said Starr, sitting on the sofa. “To tell the truth, I enjoyed it.”

  “I know you did. Of us all, you are the most animal.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You know what I mean, Starr. You worry about Marla, who has too much humanity left in her, about me and how I can’t control my telepathy-empathy, but the one you need to worry about, is you: you who has very little humanity left inside. Sure, Credenza suggests that Mara may have a hard time, but you are headed down a dangerous path. If you do not control it, someone may put you down one day.”

  Starr couldn’t believe that Shane was speaking to her in such a manner. This was exactly why Shane was excluded from them, on a regular basis: she just couldn’t keep her nose out of their personal business.

  “Screw you, Shane. Are you threatening me?”

  “Look, we don’t want to hurt you.”

  “We? So you’ve been talking about me behind my back?”

  “Credenza said some who turn may completely vamp out. We can’t have that, and you know that. We won’t hurt you as long as you are still the Starr we know, but if you continue to indulge your desires, you’ll be no better than a rabid dog or the serial killer we put down.”

  Vamp out was Credenza’s label for those who’d completely succumbed to being turned; they were the basest form of vampire, like a lion in a jungle, pure animal, pure hunter, and pure, nearly, unstoppable beast.

  “Don’t you think I know that? I struggle with this, just like you struggle with your changes, and Marla with hers. Don’t you think I know the way I feel is wrong? But, like you guys, I’m learning to control it!”

  Shane said nothing.

  “Fine,” said Starr. “I’ll leave tonight.”

  “No,” said Shane. “We need you.”

  “No, I’m gone. Now you can all rest easy but, if you ever come after me, know that I will fight you. You think I got wild tonight, you just try me and you’ll see just how wild I can get!”

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen; this is not what we want! We need each other! You can’t leave, Starr!”

  “Shane, you just threatened to put me down like a rabid dog. How ca
n I stay? When I know that you three are watching me? When I know you’re contemplating my every move? If you didn’t want me to leave, then you should have kept your big mouth shut, but, as usual, you can’t.”

  “Starr, you ate those men’s brains!”

  “We are vampires, Shane! Get used to it! I didn’t do anything unusual, or unlike our kind, tonight. Just because you have a hard time accepting who you are, doesn’t mean that I should have to, too. Don’t put your crap on me, Shane!”

 

  Starr walked out of the apartment, down the stairs, down the steps, and out into the night. As a bag lady passed her by, she screamed blood curdling.

  Surprised, Starr looked in the window closest to her and saw that her face was smeared with blood.

  Sniffing the air, looking around for empty apartments, she found several. She abounded for the empty live-motel, several blocks over. Climbing the side steps of the building, she opened the locked window with ease and climbed inside.

  She could sense that nearly everyone on the floor was asleep. She walked into the bathroom and turned on the tap water, but froze at the sight of her face.

  Blood, red like rubies, was cracked and dried like little bits of glass on her face. She looked sick like a monster. Maybe she was, in fact, a monster. What if Shane were right?

  School, As Usual

  Chapter 6

  Next day was the same, as usual. The kids greeted her at the entrance to school: Rachel and Chloe had clever remarks as usual. This, she found amusing because they were clearly up to something and seemed not to realize they were taunting the only person that was onto them.

  She would get them, thought Starr.

  Although things seemed normal, the school building was more heavily laden in graffiti than usual. Starr assumed it was the pleasure of Antony and, probably, Bielz.

  Starr saw Antony about, but he didn’t go out of his way to say ‘hi’ to her, but he watched her out of the corner of his eye. Whenever she walked around him, she sensed his peaked interest.

  She didn’t need Shane’s mind reading ability to know that Antony knew something about her, but she was too consumed with her departure from the clinic to care.

  Later, after school, she saw them hanging out across the street, but they didn’t wave this time.

  There was one thing she was dreading that afternoon, and that was returning to the clinic to get her things. What if they tried to kill her?

  Well, she thought, if she had to, she would bury them all. She would survive, even if she had to kill her best friends because that was the vampire inside her.

  Demon Chase

  Vampin Book Series #5

  By Jamie Ott

  Copyright 2011 Jamie Ott. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used without written permission, except for where credit is duly given.

  ISBN-13: 978-1467987746 

   

  ISBN-10:   1467987746 

  For all inquiries, please contact ladysonoma@americamail.com.

  Last Leg

  Chapter 1

  Despite Starr’s passport not matching her appearance, the airport employees gave her no problems. Her father, who was in the Air Force, got it for her when she was twelve, for when they were stationed in Germany. Now, at sixteen, she’d changed a lot since then: her hair was straight waist length and blue black like the midnight sky, and she never went anywhere without black eyeliner and red lips.

  Her seat rattled as the person behind her put a tray in upright position.

  She couldn’t stand the tight little seats and the cramped little space of the 737 aircraft. All she wanted was to land so she could stretch her legs; that and she was tired of smelling the toilet.

  The passenger in front of her lifted the shade. Beams of light reflected off the icy clouds, and glared brightly.

  She smelled it, again, coming from a man in a black suit: a sweet scent that reminded her of a light sage. His dark eyes stayed forward, as though trying not to give away that he was onto her, but she knew he was.

  Normally, once a human was turned, they stopped putting off their pungent animal smells – body odor - but they still secreted pheromones.

  Deeply, she inhaled the air, tasting the sage and trying to pick out the pheromones so as to determine if he was a threat to her.

  She was distracted by the pilot’s voice, coming over the intercom, letting them know they had already begun their descent toward the Sibiu Airport, in Transylvania, Romania.

  The man’s scent filled the air at the news. He was just as happy, as she was, for the long trip to be over.

  She and the man, who continued to pretend he wasn’t following her, made it through customs and baggage claim, though he didn’t have any bags. He even followed her to the taxi line.

  Was he really so stupid as to think she didn’t notice?

  Oh well. It was better to play naïve, for the moment, anyway. She didn’t want to get on the bad side of Louisa Credenza who was the reason for her flying to Romania. Unfortunately, she was hoping to make the trip in secret, so already being followed was real disappointing.

  “Unde a face nevoie la spre energie?” asked her cab driver.

  A trick of being a vampire was Starr seemed to have gained a, sort of, extra sensory perception to understand what people wanted of her, even if the language they spoke wasn’t English. Unfortunately, her comprehension didn’t always mean that she knew how to respond, which is why she spent many of the hours, mid-flight, studying basic Romanian phrases.

  “A face pe plac lat, Marriott Hotel,” she said slowly and awkwardly.

  When he asked which one, she merely looked into his eyes, in the rearview mirror, shrugged her shoulders and furrowed her eyebrows.

  The man seemed to understand, for he said “Nici o problema,” and drove off.

  Starr hadn’t much time to plan before she’d left the city. It was a last minute decision that she should come and track down the headquarters of, what Louisa Credenza called, The Council.

  Repeatedly, she looked out the back window, trying to see if the man in the suit was there, in one of the cars, but she couldn’t find him, nor smell him out of all the exhaust and crisp mountain air.

  Twenty minutes later, the cab driver parked in front of a hotel lobby in the center of Sibiu.

  If she were still alive, her breath would have been taken away by the beautiful, old city.

  As she stepped out of the car, she turned around, looking at the exotic medieval structures. It was true, what they say: Transylvania appeared to be an excellently maintained medieval territory.

  The buildings were charming, though old, and, yet, somewhat garish. Rather than original restorations, the patrons mended their old frames with common house paint.

  All up and down the cobble streets, colors of white, yellow and pink glared through the misty atmosphere of Sibiu. The paint simply didn’t match their structures. She couldn’t help but think they shouldn’t have put drywall over the beautiful wooden churches, or over the old stone buildings.

  Looking south, she saw enormous, intimidating mountains with blankets of mist threatening to drop down on them. She wondered if they were the infamous Carpathian Mountains that bordered the Ukraine.

  Looking at them, she imagined wars upon wars, and blood and swords: people fighting and people dying, centuries ago.

  As she walked up the path, to the hotel, she sampled the air, but didn’t taste, smell or sense the man.

  At the counter, a lady in a blue suit with her hair in a tight bun asked, “Cum pot ajutor tu?”

  “A room, please,” Starr said, hoping she understood.

  “O’gay,” she said with a thick accent.

  It wasn’t until the woman asked how she’d be paying that Starr realized she’d forgotten to visit the currency counter at the airport. She didn’t have any credit cards, as she was only sixteen.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “They ar-r-re expensive, the air-r-rp
ort,” she rolled each R short and harshly.

  The woman gave her directions to a spot down the street.

  Starr couldn’t help but laugh at all the Dracula propaganda posted in shop windows and passed out in pamphlets on the street. They all said, “Dracula lived here,” “Dracula ate here,” and “Come visit Dracula’s …,” something, or other.

  When she returned to the hotel, Starr was checked into a nice clean room, where she crashed on the bed and sighed, loudly.

  Traveling was exhausting and, though she loved seeing new places, she hoped never to have to leave the Unites States again.

  Inwardly, she told herself she just wanted to relax, after being cramped in a steel tube for nearly a day and a half, but that was completely changed when she looked out of her room’s window.

  Once again she was awed by centuries old beauty.

  Across the sky, and along the base of the lower part of Sibiu, old houses were crammed next to each other in a long row.

  Up higher, she saw enormous solitary structures: castles, dark and foreboding, even in the light of day.

  Pressing her face into the window, she looked right and saw half a dozen castle-like structures; they had cylindrical shapes and conical pointed roofs.

  Anxious to see, up close, the old city, she put her stuff in the safe, grabbed her bag and walked down to the tourist counter where she booked her first tour.

  One thing that made her laugh was how all the brochures, behind the hotel’s counter, called all the castles Dracula’s whether he actually lived there or not. If he stopped in for the night, or only for a café, the place was, apparently, his.

  She spent the day on the tour in the city of Sighisoara, one of Vlad III’s real homes when his father, Vlad II, was in exile.